Makepeace and Grimes

A new direction

You know, every now and again, an idea occurs that is too good to be left until later. I’d just finished the fourth book in the Robot Empire series (Sledgehammer) and was organising a group promotion for some author friends who write historical fiction. I’ve always enjoyed reading stories set in the past (though I am fussy about which periods exactly) and wondered if it might be fun to write a quick novelette to enter into the promotion and to see what sort of a reaction I would get.

I decided to give it a try and to set it in the late Victorian London familiar to fans of Sherlock Holmes. I invented the main characters – Makepeace and Grimes and decided that their domain would be around Bow Road since my ancestor ran a lodging house there. My concept was that Grimes was assigned the problems that Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t touch with a barge pole.

The story is written as a diary extract from Makepeace released a century after he recorded his memories in 1918.

I’ve had a fantastic response to it so far and absolutely loved writing it – especially in adding real world details of the time and place as well as some that are very definitely not of this world!

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